Tassie football in crisis (again)

Mar 17, 2009
21,636
17,319
Hobart
AFL Club
Collingwood
Prior to late 80's, the WAFL & SANFL still retained many/most great players/champions in their competitions (ie they never went, or only went later in their careers, to the VFL). Even after 1990, the WAFL & SANFL were high standard competitions attracting good crowds (but crowds are in a worrying major decline now).
The WAFL & SANFL, therefore, still retained great prestige/big crowds/ high standards/good elite jnr. pathways.

In Tas., however, they lost a large majority of their great players -thus the standard of their elite comps. plummeted. Without the fallback of their own AFL team, & the related glamour/expert coaching etc. filtering down to lower comps., Tas.GR AF was severely damaged. We must NEVER forget that Tas. produced 14 players drafted to the VFL in 1986.
The VFL/AFL can no longer disguise/bury/spin their way out of the destruction they have caused to Tas. elite standards, their senior comps., & to GR AF. The huge crowds, per capita, the TFL, NTFA, NWFU previously experienced made Tas., most likely, the most fanatical AF state in Aust.

When you look at the list of VFL players who came down & played &/or coached here, you can see how far our football has been pulled down. When you see a Peter Hudson make his comeback here in the TFL, then go back to Hawthorn for a year, you can see where we were.

Every other state have ended up with 2 teams in the AFL to give that continuity of high level football. ( although 2 in WA & 2 in Qld & 10 in Vic shows the overly Vic centric nature of the competition). The VFL had their poorer sides dragged in to the National level & given every assistance to keep surviving despite the obvious imbalance in the competition. All the evener up rules, draft, salary cap, welfare payments etc, designed to benefit them, haven't really hidden their inherent weakness.

Thats the bias & the politics right their.
 
Sep 21, 2002
52,639
46,330
Adelaide
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Norwood
When you look at the list of VFL players who came down & played &/or coached here, you can see how far our football has been pulled down. When you see a Peter Hudson make his comeback here in the TFL, then go back to Hawthorn for a year, you can see where we were.

I remember in a football magazine (I think Inside Football ?) in the late 1960s, they selected a composite team of Tasmanians playing in the VFL at the time. The teams was loaded with superstars and would have smashed any other "state of origin" team in the country.
 
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